Shams Pahlavi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shams Pahlavi (1950)

Shams Pahlavi ( Persian شمس پهلوی Shams Pahlawi ; * October 28, 1917 in Tehran ; † February 29, 1996 in Santa Barbara , California ) was an Iranian princess.

Life

Coronation of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, right Shams Pahlavi (1967)

Her parents were Reza Shah Pahlavi and Tadj ol-Molouk . Shams Pahlavi was the older sister of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Ashraf Pahlavi . She caused a stir in 1934 when she and her sister, Princess Ashraf, took off the veil that women in Iran usually wore at the time.

At her father's request, in 1937 she married Fereydoun Djam, the son of the Iranian politician Mahmud Jam . The marriage was not harmonious and was divorced immediately after Reza Shah's death in 1944. In 1941 after the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran and the abdication of Reza Shah, Shams accompanied her father to Port Louis and later Johannesburg during his exile . Her memories of the stays were published in monthly installments in the Iranian newspaper Ettelā'āt in 1948 .

In 1945 she married Mehrdad Pahlbod, with whom she had two sons and a daughter. Immediately after the marriage, their title and ranks were withdrawn for a short time. Because of this, the couple lived in the United States from 1945 to 1947 . Later there was a reconciliation with the royal court. They then returned to Tehran, but left the country a short time later due to unrest during the Abadan crisis . Princess Shams converted to Catholicism in the 1940s . Ernest Perron, her brother's secretary and confidante, was instrumental in this decision. Her husband and children later also converted.

During her brother's reign in Iran, she was president of the Red Lion and Red Sun Society of Iran . Her husband was Iran's first minister of culture from 1964 to 1978. Unlike her sister Ashraf, she appeared less publicly and limited her activities to managing the assets she had inherited from her father. In the 1960s, Princess Shams commissioned architects from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to build the Morvarid Palace in Mehrshahr and the Villa Mehrafarin in Chalus .

After the Iranian Revolution in 1979 she lived in California. Princess Shams died of cancer in Santa Barbara in 1996.

Prizes and awards (selection)

  • 1957: Iran - Order of the Pleiades , 2nd class
  • 1967: Iran - Order of the Aryamehr , 2nd class

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ pahlavi2. Retrieved December 6, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung : Persian princess died at the age of 96 , January 8, 2016
  3. ↑ a b Fakhreddin AZIMI, Fakhreddin Azimi: QUEST FOR DEMOCRACY IN IRAN C: a century of struggle against authoritarian rule . Harvard University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-674-02036-8 ( google.de [accessed December 6, 2019]).
  4. ↑ Asad Allāh ʿAlam: The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1969-1977 . IB Tauris, 1991, ISBN 978-1-85043-340-8 ( google.com [accessed December 6, 2019]).
  5. ↑ I cannot blame them. In: The Iranian. June 1, 2002, Retrieved December 6, 2019 (American English).
personal data
SURNAME Pahlavi, Shams
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pahlawi, shams
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Iranian princess
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Tehran , Iran
DATE OF DEATH February 29, 1996
Place of death Santa Barbara (California)